


beneath fortune's wheel

by winterbones



Category: The White Queen (TV)
Genre: F/M, alternative history, alternative universe, but there will also be sex eventually, everyone STILL dies, richardian england
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 09:04:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbones/pseuds/winterbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Fortune's wheel never stands still—the highest point is therefore the most perilous."</p><p>1471. Margaret d'Anjou routs Edward IV's forces at Battle of Tewkesbury, and the king is captured and swiftly executed. In the aftermath, former King Edward's brothers have fled into exile, and Anne Neville, now Princess of Wales, finds herself trapped in the icy cage of a Lancasterian court. But the sun has not yet set on the Yorkish rose, and the wheel of fortune is ever turning.</p><p>[ an alternative history ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	beneath fortune's wheel

  
**part i: the princess of wales**

“she was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte”  
          - D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterly’s Lover

November, 1471

The Princess Anne, formerly the Kingmaker’s daughter now the wife of the Edward of Lancaster, woke from a nightmare that had grown far too familiar to her in the months she had spent at the Windsor Castle. A cool sweat bathed her brow as she rolled over and curled her legs to her chest, shuddering deep. She stared into the moonlit shadows of her room, not daring to close her eyes, knowing what she would see.

_Edward of York, forced to kneel before stony-faced Margaret d’Anjou. There was blood crusted at the corner of his mouth, where he had fiercely bitten down on his tongue as he spat his curses to the queen he had once dethroned. Anne wanted to turn away, would have turned away, but her husband’s spidery fingers cut into her shoulders, braced her back against his chest._

_“Watch,” he had hissed into her ear. “Watch the Yorks fall.”_

_Queen Margaret had already proven herself more than capable to the task of killing Yorkists, and didn’t flinch as the sword swung down._

Anne shuddered, pressing a shaking hand to her roiling stomach. She wished she had fainted, and been spared the sight of King Edward’s severed head, but her body had frozen up, refused to do anything more than stare unseeingly into the crush of the gathered crowd. Margaret d’Anjou had crowed, and clapped her hands together, and declared an end to the usurpers rule.

Morning crept cautiously over her windowsill, spreading out gray fingers to dispel the shadows of the night. Anne crept out of bed and padded toward her frost-lined window, shivering as her bare feet ghosted across the chilled wooden floor, one hand clutching her chemise to her shaking form.

If she had had the will for it, she might have prayed. She always felt closest to the Lord when she watched the golden glow of the sun spill out onto the garden below her window. She might have prayed for Middleham Castle, and the North, and the home and childhood she had once known—there were other things, too, that a younger Anne would have prayed for; things she had shelved and hidden in her heart so deeply sometimes she even forget she had once wanted them.

When her ladies-in-waiting came in to dress her, they found their princess standing by the window, framed by the early hue of the orange morning. They clucked around her, voices a disjointed combination of French and English that Anne could only half follow along, as they compressed her into a fine midnight yellow gown and coiffured her hair into a series of braids along the crown of her head.

One might have remarked how fine she looked this morning, with sunlight in her tawny, wild mane. Anne was hardly listening. Her thumb tapped rhythmically on the pointed bone extending from her collar. The castle was always abuzz with activity, even this early in the morning, and Anne had little wish to join. She didn’t _feel_ anything resembling festivities, or toasting King Henry or even her husband. She felt like sleeping. She felt old, and she felt tired, and she felt so so so alone.

 _I miss father, and I miss mother—I miss Isabel most of all._ Father was dead, murdered on the fields at Barnet waving Lancaster colors, Mother had retreated to sanctuary and since Margaret d’Anjou had no need for cowards who fled and had informed her she was welcome to remain thus, and Isabel—Isabel who had not been able to reach her husband in time, who had pleaded her own loyalty to her father’s cause, was sequestered away at Warwick Castle under heavy guard. Not even letter could pass between the two sisters, the only family left to each other.

She was frightened. Every day she woke up with fear gnawing at her toes, and every night she went to bed with it chewing at her ears. But what choice did she have? Edward Plantagent had been routed, King Henry sat on the throne—though the doddering old man seemed barely aware of his own name anymore—and _she_ was married to Edward of Lancaster, heir apparent. Her son would sit on the throne as a Lancasterian king. Her father would get what he had always wanted, Neville blood on the English throne.

It was one of the few comforts Anne was allowed. _Do your duty, remember who you are and the great name that you bear!_ She was fulfilling his dream, wasn’t she? She was playing the Neville role flawlessly; the perfect, demure queen that her husband wanted. He had made it abundantly clear that he had no care for wives who meddled in their husband’s affair.

_“A wife’s duty is to give her husband heirs. Nothing more.”_

Anne prayed she quickened soon. Her husband never made it any secret that he detested his marital duties, finding her form to be boyish and repulsive, but he would perform them until he had an heir from her. Anne would sooner get with child than not. She hadn’t loved her husband when she had married him, and she liked him even less now. There was a cruelty in him that made nerves ruminate like a harried rabbit at the backs of her knees—his violence to her person had thus far remained to ruthless pinches at her sides, easily covered up, only one cracking the backside of his hand against her cheek when she had dared insist that her mother be freed from her enforced Sanctuary.

She had once loved to scamper down the halls of the cast, Isabel’s gale laugh flowing over her head. Now Anne walked down them as if there were weights tied to her ankles.

Queen Margaret was likely already in the family’s private chamber, going over the latest reports of Dame Elizabeth Grey, who still kept her Sanctuary in Westminster, discussing how best to starve out the rebels in the south who still swore allegiance to the Yorks, and sniffing out the hiding place of the Duke of Clearance and the Duke of Gloucester—

“Your Highness.” One of her ladies-in-waiting caught her elbow as Anne’s foot slipped along the stone floor.

“I’m alright,” she murmured, straightening. It wouldn’t do to think of any of the York brothers, and how often had she told herself that? She had played her hand, and now could only see the game through—like her father before her, whose debts had been collected at Barnet. A small, blackened part of her had wished them all dead when news of the Earl of Warwick’s death had reached her, she had chosen to ride with Margaret d’Anjou when she could have fled with her mother to Sanctuary, she had stood with her mother-in-law and husband when former King Edward’s forced were defeated at Tewkesbury, and had been made to watch Edward Plantagent’s death.

 _There is nothing for it, she thought, I cannot go back to the girl I was, no matter how I might wish it._ What she wouldn’t give for those simple days curled up beside Isabel, whispering stories back and forth, playing with the shadows on the wall. If King Edward hadn’t married Elizabeth Grey none of this would have happened—but Anne was passed the point of blaming anyone. She did not have the energy for it.

“If the Lady Gray would only come out of Sanctuary, I would promise her no harm to she or her daughters. Her mother was once my good friend, and I would do this out of love for her.”

“Not likely—now that you’ve made her son a bastard and their marriage invalid, I’m surprise she hasn’t put a curse on you. They say she’s a witch.”

“Bah!” Margaret d’Anjou’s eyes tracked over to Anne as she entered, rolling her lips over the rim of her wine goblet. “Jacquetta practiced, I have no doubt. What was it she always said—descended from Melusine? Ha! Being a woman is a curse in itself—is it not?”

The words were volleyed at Anne as she slipped into the seat beside her husband. She murmured a noncommittal sound as she folded her hands neatly in her lap. Queen Margaret and Prince Edward were typically content to ignore her, but as Anne plucked at a loose thread on her gown she felt both their gazes fastened upon her.

Her chin lifted, the dying spark of her spirit returning for a brief sputtering moment, “What? What is it?”

“I’m just so happy to see you, lady wife,” Prince Edward said, catching her hand and dragging it to his lips. Anne felt her stomach recoil at the dark glint in his eyes, and the grip he had on her hand was near bruising.

“See me?” The impossibility of _that_ was striking enough to make a laugh escape Anne’s lips, hoarse and rusty from disuse. She tried to tug her hand free, but her husband held fast. “I don’t—what for?”

“Your sister is in residence here.”

Anne’s head whipped around, to the cool voice of Queen Margaret, watching her with a callous gaze, wine goblet still lifted to her lips.

“Isabel? My sister? She’s—she’s here?” The spark came back, igniting deep and warm inside her breast. Isabel was here, after months of forced captivity in Warwick Castle.

The chair scrapped noisily against the floor as Anne shoved to her feet. “Where—where is she? I want—I want to see her. I want to see her right now.”

Queen Margaret’s eyes slipped over to her son’s, a sly, icy gaze that made Anne’s hands still on the table.

“Do not look so pleased, my lady wife,” her husband drawled, accepting a goblet of Marmsay wine from his mother. He dabbed a finger into it, dropping a dollop onto his tongue. “She has been brought here because she has been found to be in collusion with her husband and the Duke of Gloucester.”

Anne backed away, hands lifted half to her ears, as if covering them would somehow stop the words, somehow make the words _not_ true.

“Your sister is a traitor,” Prince Edward said, corner of his lip quirked maliciously. “And will die a traitor’s death.”

 

 

 

 

 

Being the Duchess of Clarence afforded Isabel some kindnesses—she would not while her time in a dank dungeon, nor would she be made to suffer a torturer’s questions. Instead, a small set of chambers were set aside for her personal use, Lancasterian guards posted at her door, proudly bearing their red roses.

They might have thought to bar Anne’s entrance, but she had learned how to walk like a princess, like a _queen_ , during her time with Margaret d’Anjou and soldiers were less likely to stop a woman who walked with every step resounding her belonging and her authority.

Once safety passed Isabel’s watchdogs Anne rushed into the private chambers.

“Isabel! Oh, Isabel!”

Her sister had been perched by her window, and turned at the sound of her voice. It occurred to Anne that her sister had grown much too thin in the few months they had been a part. Isabel had always been slender, thin-boned, and pale enough to look ethereal, but the woman who rushed to wrap Anne up in bony arms was gaunt and hollowed out, like the months had whittled her down.

“Oh, Anne. Anne. Let me have a look at you.” Isabel drew away, smoothing a hand down the side of Anne’s face, tears making the icy blues of her eyes glint. “You’ve always been so small, Anne, but now I think you’re disappearing all together!”

It hadn’t occurred to Anne what effects the months had wrought on her. She hadn’t been eating as she had been accustomed to, had found her appetite sourly lacking, and her ladies-in-waiting had been commenting on the loosening fall of her gowns as of late.

Had they both changed so much? Anne thought, looking at her sister. How could a handful of months change them as if they had been parted for years?

“I’ve missed you,” Anne said in a rush, tripping over her words in her haste to speak them. “But Isabel—Isabel, what’s happened? My husband won’t tell me why but he says—he says—”

“I am a traitor?” Isabel pulled away, retreating now to the window. “I suppose I must be. I’ve kept correspondence with my husband, Anne. I thought I was being so clever, having them carried out in the pockets of servants. The _Bad Queen_ is a devious sort. She found me out, and here I am.”

“You’ve been—you’ve been speaking to your husband?” _George, Duke of Clearance._ Who once was a traitor too, but he’d thrown Anne’s father over in favor of his brother. And still he’d lost all when Queen Margaret had kept her hold on the country.

“Yes.” There was a sudden sharpness to the gaze that Isabel pinned on Anne, enough shrewdness in that look to make her jump. “Perhaps I should not tell you.”

“Isabel, surely you cannot think—”

“You’re the Princess of Wales, and when King Henry dies you’ll be queen.”

Anne would have clamped her hands over her ears if this confrontation had occurred only a year ago. She had always been rubbish at confrontations, preferring to simply give in and save herself the trouble. Now, she _had_ spent time in Margaret d’Anjou’s court, and though the lessons she had learned there were not easy or had come cheaply, they were ingrained into her bones. She wasn’t the trembling little girl who had married Edward of Lancaster in France because her father had willed it.

“I did my duty,” Anne said, her voice a whip of ice that made Isabel flinch. “As father wished. I do everything in my power to see the dream he carried to his death in Barnet—Neville blood on the English throne.”

“Anne—”

“But Edward is a _monster_.” Her voice broke on the last word, and Anne nearly hated herself for it. Margaret d’Anjou would have never flinched. “I never wanted to marry him.”

Isabel’s cool, slender fingers cupped Anne’s face. “I’m sorry. That was cruel of me. Of course, I don’t think that. You only ever wanted to please father—all we ever wanted to do was please father. But he’s dead now, and with God, and can take no joy even if you fulfill his dream.” When Anne would have turned her gaze away, Isabel’s fingers tightened over her cheeks. “I have been speaking to my husband, spending him reports. I do not know much at the caste, but I can act as a waypoint between the spies and the rightful king of England.”

Anne’s gaze lifted, riveted to the way Isabel’s high cheek bones pressed against her skin at her words, as if her rage could not be contained within her own skin. Isabel had changed to, in their apart.

_Neither of us are girls anymore._

“Anne, you must listen to me,” Isabel murmured, drawing Anne into another hug, mouth close to the shell of her ears. “The York sons will take back London, and they will take it back soon.”

“George and R—Rich—” The words came to a grinding halt on her tongue, and sat there heavily. Anne shook her head against Isabel hair, inhaling the fresh, clean sent of rainwater. “But the reports say they are not even in the country—they are fled to Bruges.”

“A lie, and one they want Margaret d’Anjou to believe heart and soul. They’re mustering the army, George and Richard, and they will be marching soon.” Isabel’s hand gripped Anne’s arms, giving her a fierce shake as she pulled away. “Anne, listen to me. You must not be in London when they do.”

The tremulous smile that had begun to edge its way across Anne’s lips died away as she stared into Isabel’s solemn face. “Why must I not?” A Lancaster princess she was now, through marriage, but the Yorks did not make war on women. Even if the loathed Margaret d’Anjou had been captured, she would have been imprisoned as Isabel was. Anne would have gladly submitted to a similar fate if she was allowed to escape her husband.

“This—Edward’s death and the loss of the throne, having to hide like common rebels—it’s changed them. George’s letters are frightening and from what I can tell Richard is—Richard is not the boy we knew. I think they—I think they might kill you, Anne. You, and Margaret d’Anjou, and most certainly your husband. I do not think they mean to spare anyone.”

It was hard to image the sons of York as anything but the bright, boisterous boys she had known only a year ago—golden, handsome Edward, charming and vivacious George, and intense, pensive Richard. Just the thought of them made her heart ache with a mixture of homesickness and longing. She had never really known King Edward, of course, had only the childlike memory of him—the golden stature on his golden throne—but Richard had—

 _No._ Anne battled back those memories, and the feelings they might have invoked. She kept them in a dark, quiet place at the back of her mind, left there to collect dust, the frayed remains of a little girl’s gown that no longer fit her.

“Anne,” Isabel’s voice was insistent, her fingers biting on Anne’s bony shoulders. “Anne, you _must_ listen.”

“I _am_.” Though just the idea of leaving the castle was an impossible one. Anne was constantly monitored, and was not allowed to journey anywhere without the escort of her husband, or one of his chosen men. Margaret d’Anjou never forgot a slight, and she had never forgotten it was the Nevilles that had helped displace her husband.

 _Traitor blood runs thick._ The harsh accented had scrapped down Anne’s arm, leaving her trembling in the wake of it. Parts of her yearned for Queen Margaret’s savagery, that indomitable strength of will that had kept the queen well fed in her exile, that had rallied her men at the River Severn, that had bolstered them until Jasper Tudor’s forces had turned the tide of the battle at Tewkesbury. Meanwhile, Anne trembled at the thunder of her voice, and the dark glint in her husband’s eyes.

“But what will you do, Isabel? I cannot leave you.”

“You must, Anne.” Isabel’s face drew pale, executing the harsh angles of her cheeks. She had been so pretty, Isabel, but this new thinness did not suit her. She looked wasted away, that any good breeze would knock her over. “I am a lost cause. No doubt that when Margaret d’Anjou hears of my husband and the Duke of Gloucester’s approach, she’ll seek to make an example of traitors—and I shall be closest at hand.”

“Oh. No. Isabel, that’s _impossible_. Even the Lancasters do not make war on women!”

Isabel’s eyes were undecipherable, dark and cool, she had grown into her womanhood uneasily, and with the blood of her firstborn son staining her thighs.

“Margaret d’Anjou is no fool,” Isabel said with a hard, chilled voice. “King Edward would have let her live, had he taken her, but she won’t make the same mistake. She knows how dangerous a woman can be.”

“Isabel.” Anne turned her head. Isabel was tall enough for Anne’s chin to bump against Isabel’s arm, and all at once Anne’s head felt far too heavy for her slender neck and it dropped heavily to the curve of Isabel’s arm. She felt a light tug on her plait, Isabel’s slender fingers winding around a thick strand.

“Please, don’t cry, Anne.”

“I’m not.” Anne felt her voice scrape, rusty and sore, up her throat. “I haven’t cried at all. Not once since father died.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hoping to make this a considerable undertaking, and a look at how things much have gone if Margaret d'Anjou had managed to win Tewkesbury, with a heavy emphasis on Richard and Anne's relationship (because this is me) and how the dynamic between changes after Anne has been firmly established as Princess of Wales. This borrows somewhat from BBC's The White Queen, but also draws quite a bit from straight history and a look at not only a Plantagent England, but the potential for a Richardian one.
> 
> hope you enjoy the ride


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